H

Tell us about how you get into music at the first place

E

[Sooji Kim speaking] We knew each other from the city, Melbourne. As for Stephanie [Brett], she really has an amazing presence on stage and a beautiful voice, so I asked her to make a band together, then Carla [Ori] joined us afterwards. The band really clicked, and here we are now.

H

How’s the band been going from the beginning until now, was there a musical change or development before Empat Lima found their style?

E

We’ve only been around for only 1 year. Tonight we’re going to play songs we wrote when the group first formed. Recently, our songs have develop into different styles as well. So we’re all building the progress together.

H

Your music infuse a lot of Asian influences, how did you came up with that?

E

We live in Melbourne, where there are a lot of Asian groups in our neighbourhood. Also, in Melbourne a lot of bands tend to be more European, and we’re not interested to be like them. Besides, there are a lot of interesting things to discover in Asian culture, and we really excited to be a part of this discovery.

H

The band held a fundraiser for this trip to Indonesia, how important is Indonesia to Empat Lima?

E

We’re really looking forward to have this trip to Indonesia, particularly because we are really inspired by Dara Puspita, and because Sooji and Carla have lived in Jogja before. So we already had a connection to Indonesia. Basically we have dreamed of coming here for a long time. The fundraising worked pretty well, it showed how our community was excited to send us here. When we were finally able to come to Indonesia, we were really happy.

H

Can you tell us about the Woman’s Art Network Indonesia To Australia (WANITA) project?

E

WANITA art project is… It is centered around creating a community for females who work in contemporary art and music both Indonesia as well as Australia. The project’s goal is allowing female artists to be connected and have the opportunity to communicate. We can see the works come from very different perspectives, but have a lot of similarities as well. We’re starting this project small, but we have the idea of building it around Southeast Asia. We also hope that a lot of potential projects and future collaborations will come out of it.

H

Many first impressions of Empat Lima is that they are an Australian Dara Puspita, are you girls OK with it or you gonna expand your sound in the future?

E

The best way for us to make music is by jamming together, that is when the element comes together. The music will develop in an organic kind of progression, so we go whatever direction it takes us. At first we start with several influences’ ideas – to start a song. Like, maybe with a specific rhythm and melodies until we feel it, but we’ll never know where the jams will brings us.

H

Most female fronted bands are feminist, do you have anything to say about that, and do you considered yourself as feminists?

E

We’re not particularly feminist, but we do think that women are great! (laughs) Performing on a stage is to represent ourselves, and it’s great. We think it is important to have a balance represented in reality, and we would like to have a lot of women feel comfortable to be expressive and free. We hope that Empat Lima have something that is encouraging – us being up there on the stage, doing what we’re doing.

H

Actually, In Indonesia we have several icons of women movements such as RA Kartini, Dewi Sartika and Tjut Nyak Dien who threw the ideas of how female should be more active in the development of society, to emancipate themselves.

E

Oh, we didn’t know about that. I guess one of the reasons we are rooted to Dara Puspita is because we are aware of the difficulties of women in Indonesia face to have equal rights. It is the same in Melbourne. Dara Puspita is really strong in the term of progression at that time. So we found out about it and was particularly inspiring – that was when they became an ideal role model for us as a band and human beings.

H

I heard that there are still some racial discrimination happening in Australia, is that true?

E

Unfortunately, yeah. It happens everywhere. It is getting better, but also getting worse at the same time. Some people are more open-minded, but Australia in general is also getting closer to the conservatism in politics, and there are still a lot of people, especially from outside of the cities, that still have the same close-minded attitude. Even though there are a lot of multicultural areas, personally, we would like to see the country be more open minded than how it is now – on the bigger political picture.

H

Do you have anything to say about the recent “bogans” phenomenon that reported to be the one that destructive to the image of Australia itself. [bogans is a self-deprecating Australian slang – in this case referring to groups of disruptive Australians visiting Bali]

E

Yes, we know about that issue very well, and it’s true. We recently saw a documentary about it ourselves. I guess the phenomenon is growing because a lot of Australian people go to Bali for cheap holidays – it’s awful and shame to us. If we’re in Kuta and see those kinds of people, then it’s better for us to leave the place because it’s embarrassing. We also think that maybe it’s because Australia is a nanny state, where there are so many rules. And just like when child grows in a really restricted environment, they have the tendency to be crazier as soon as they come out from the house. It’s a real pity.

H

Despite that, many great art movement and music came out from Melbourne

E

Melbourne is quite different with a lot places in Australia, it’s much more European than Sidney or any other city, and it’s much more multicultural. But actually if we talk about Australia, Melbourne is not really a proper representative. Melbourne is an exception.

H

Tell us about the music scene in Melbourne

E

The music scene is really great, we have so many venues, and it’s all over the city. All kinds of it, from small to big, the venues are open to the music scene. Every night we have hundreds of gigs that play from one venue to another. Melbourne people generally loves to see music as well, so the supportive community is really helping. A little while ago they tried to close down a famous pub in Melbourne, people react to it by marching on the street (the biggest march that we have ever seen) – and everyone took to the street and protesting so that they couldn’t do shut it down.

H

I heard that you also making a project that will compile a female fronted musician from this tour.

E

We tried to organize as many female fronted bands to perform with us during the tour, but sometimes it’s been difficult for us to find female bands in Indonesia. The output of it is to make a cassette compilation. And then promote it back in Australia. To spread the good music that made by all the women.

A special thank you to Ruang Rupa for making this interview with Empat Lima possible.